


Firehair

by redtrouble



Series: Demonheart: Through the Eyes of Sir Brash [1]
Category: Demonheart (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 07:18:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15091841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redtrouble/pseuds/redtrouble
Summary: Sir Brash meets Bright for the first time in her prison cell, told from Brash's perspective. (Spoilers if you haven't played the game but then...why are you here? Go play it! Now!) Rated M for mature language.





	Firehair

Brash stared down the long, dark hall at the warding glyphs scrawled over each empty cell—wards against demonic activity—and rolled his good eye then started walking. They’d put her all the way in the back as though it would mitigate future escape attempts. Fucking morons, all of them—the guard stumbling after him, that shit Lord of that shit town, and all the limp-dick excuses for soldiers pussy-footing about his camp. Worst of all was that cocksucker of a knight whose nose was so far up his own self-righteous asshole that he couldn’t tell the two apart. Everything about Feline was weak compared to Scarcewall. Even its prisons were soft.

His armor clanked with every heavy step, the only sound besides the torches burning on the walls in this tomb of a prison. He hadn’t needed to come—probably shouldn’t have without orders, but who was really going to stop him? This was Rosie’s job as ambassador. She was scheduled to arrive that evening with release papers, would have the girl out by morning, but he couldn’t help it. He had to come. His curiosity overwhelmed him. Just what kind of killer kitten would he find behind those bars? What kind of girl was he dragging off to her death? What kind of whore was the ex-fiancée of that piece of shit Feline knight? This girl called Bright…

The kitty cats in that wretched town had called her beautiful, but one look at the local population made him question their perception. Beautiful comparatively, perhaps, but his expectations were low. Some had said she was sweet and kind, others said intelligent, and a great many more offered descriptors like vicious, monster, demon, and snake. It was safe to say he didn’t trust the critique. One version was too good to be true and the other was too unlikely. Besides, she had to be a fucking dimwit to date that good-for-nothing Feline knight—good for nothing but target practice.

His anticipation climaxed as her cell came into view, fully expecting to see a wench of a woman glaring daggers at him. He braced himself for the inevitable disappointment…and then stopped dead in his tracks the moment he laid eyes on her. They didn’t tell him she was a fucking firehair. Even in the dark, he could see it was long and thick and vibrant and red as blood. And fucking gorgeous.

Godsdamnit.

He inched closer. Somehow she hadn’t heard him coming and was fast asleep. She was a tiny thing, curled up like that and half-starved. Her skin was pale, but he wasn’t sure if that was because she was naturally fair-skinned or from poor nutrition and being underground so long. Her clothes were tattered and worn and covered in filth.

Brash stopped outside her cage, listing to the right to let the torchlight in, and gazed down at her face framed by curls and flyaway strands of that stunning red hair. She was fucking beautiful, even with the scar around her throat and the dirt caked on her cheeks. At the very least, he had expected average—she’d been dating Sir Target Practice, after all. Besides, the woman had had her head chopped off, so imagining her still fetching was hard. He knew she was a demonheart—one didn’t regenerate lost limbs without that special detail—but it hadn’t stopped him from imagining a dog behind those bars.

But she wasn’t a dog at all. She wasn’t even a crazy cat. She was a sweet, little kitten if there ever was one. This was Feline’s ferocious killer? This was the demonheart they reviled and feared? This was the girl he was expected to put on the proverbial chopping block?

Her eyelids fluttered and she made a small noise, finally coming around. He squatted down in front of the cell and slipped his hand through the bar, offering up the enticing smell of baked goods, and waited for her to open her eyes and see him there. What would her reaction be? She had to be a nasty bitch for the rumors to make any sense—violent and ill-mannered and sleazy. He waited for her to open her eyes and show him that ugly side of her, to prove the strays of Feline right about her even while a quiet part of him dared her to defy the lies.

Brash carefully set the muffin on the ground and rested his forearms across his knees. “Here, kitty, kitty…” he called softly and grinned.

With his shadow cast over her, he couldn’t tell what color her eyes were when she opened them, only that they were light. She frowned at him, bleary-eyed, and blinked a few times as she quickly came out of the fog of sleep. She sat up suddenly in surprise and the torchlight lit up her face. She squinted against the light for just a second before adjusting and he saw her eyes were like two bright citrines.

“So. This little thing…” he muttered, studying her pronounced collarbone and the way her clothes seemed too big for her. Just then he heard the footfall of the idiot guard and glanced over his shoulder to see the fool cautiously bumbling their way. He looked back at the girl in time for her to finally noticed the muffin. She hesitated for only a moment and then crawled toward it. “Good kitten,” he growled.

She was close enough to reach out and touch but he kept his hands hanging between his knees. She looked small even this close, with her slender neck that revealed her nervous swallow and her long, thin fingers gently cradling the muffin.

“I hear you babies from Feline fancy sweets,” he said, watching her closely for a reaction when he added, “Even dangerous outlaws such as yourself.”

Her eyes widened and her head snapped up. He half-expected her to deny it, half-expected her to spit in his face. She did neither.

“Why…would you bring me this?” she asked and held up the muffin. Her voice was soft and raspy and full of confusion and wonder, not rage or bitterness.

Why? She wanted to know why? The impact of that question was staggering. Why did he bring her a muffin? Why not? Maybe no one else believed she deserved it, but he hadn’t expected her to think so—at least, that was the only explanation he could come up with, unless it was the gesture itself and not the item that toppled her. Of all the reactions, he hadn’t expected her to ask why—and not with that sweet voice of hers.

“Thought it might cheer you up,” he threw out, still grinning, still trying to balance out what he had heard about her and what had turned out to be true. Nothing was adding up—nothing but the positives, at any rate, and that was just too damn impossible to be right.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Heh. You know, most people would be spitting out their bloody teeth if they had the guts to ask me that. But you really have no idea, being a,” his eyes slid down the slope of her scarred throat, “domestic Feline kitty.” He watched her swallow nervously again and something in his gut stirred at the sight.

“I’m sorry…”

Sorry. _Sorry._ She was fucking sorry. Why the fuck was she sorry? Why the fuck was this little girl in this place anyway? Where was the sinister bitch that had slaughtered a witch, painted the walls with her blood, crammed her corpse in an oven, and burned it?

Brash snorted quietly. “I’m almost sorry that they don’t have a better prison for soft little girls like you,” he mused. For some reason, he wanted her to know it wasn’t as bad as it could be. It seemed bad—it _was_ bad—but it wasn’t as bad as it would be if she was a prisoner in his city. “But let me tell you—that shithead guard of yours is a _nice_ guy! You obviously haven’t been to Scarcewall… I’ve been hanging around prisons for a long time. You should see what we do to girls like you in Scarcewall.”

The kitten stared at him, caution etched in the furrow of her brow, the glint in her eyes. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t even open her mouth—not to curse him, to protest, nothing. She knew when to keep her mouth shut. Could it really be true? Could she really be that smart?

“Hey!” the guard shouted obnoxiously from behind him and the kitten jumped at the harsh sound. “That’s enough socializing with the prisoner.” He was trying to sound authoritative but the, “Sir,” he added gave away his unease. “She is nothing special, as you can surely see. She is nothing!”

Brash watched the way she flinched ever so slightly at the insult, noted her downcast eyes and the straight line of her mouth. She didn’t like it but she wasn’t foolish enough to argue.

“Is that so…?” he mumbled, his eyes locked on her for glimpses of more of these interesting little details.

“Except, of course,” the guard continued dumbly, “that she is a demon and a murderer—they must have told you.”

Her brow and eyes twitched at the word “murderer” but she kept her head down. Brash tilted his head, hoping to catch her eyes, and saw in the sliver of revealed torchlight as her jaw tensed. There was a fire in her still, but it was checked.

“Are you a demon, sweetheart?” he asked her, amused. She looked up. The way she looked at him but not into his eyes told him she couldn’t actually see his face. With his back to the torch, he was sure he was a dark, armored silhouette, imposing and mysterious, yet she looked at him with determination in her eyes in spite of her trepidation. He admired that.

“No,” she said as a matter of fact.

“She says not,” he told the guard, still grinning, still watching her. She didn’t drop her gaze back to her knees and kept her head up, even when the guard started hissing again.

“Lying snake! Even as a demon, she is still only a commoner who committed a cowardly crime. She sold her soul for nothing, if you ask me.”

Brash was starting to get annoyed, his patience at this moron wearing thin. “It’s a good thing I’m not asking you,” he barked. “You’re used to having a lot of authority here, huh? Over this one poor, tortured convict.”

It pissed him off to know how much this guy flexed his cock over one small, gentle murderess. He was rife with fear, too chicken shit to go near the bars, but he spit at her cage and cursed her from a distance like some fucking big, brave man.

“I am only doing my duty,” the guard complained and Brash thought he might actually punch him in the face. “I’d prefer if these demons and witches could disintegrate and leave this world in peace, but it ain’t happening.”

Brash turned his head an inch to the right toward the guard. “Would you prefer it if I were to disintegrate also?” he asked, hoping the fucker would answer wrong so he could spatter his brain against the wall.

“N-no, Sir,” he stammered. “I said no such thing.”

But he had and just didn’t know it. Fool. Fucker. He wanted him gone. Brash turned his head back toward the kitten, ready to continue their conversation, but was interrupted again.

“Apologies if I came across as impolite,” the guard continued, and Brash took a deep breath. He really was losing his patience. He felt his fingers curling into fists. “I don’t think she is worth talking to, is all.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” he growled. “You shut up before I wipe the floor with your useless hide.”

Brash mentally counted down from three with every intention of splitting the idiot’s skull open when he hit zero, but the guard wasn’t stupid enough to stick around. Without another word, he shuffled off toward the exit. Brash side-glanced at the stump of a man idling on the far side of the room, embarrassed and nervous and avoiding looking in their direction.

Satisfied, Brash looked at the kitty girl again and couldn’t help but grin at the sight of all that red hair. It was tangled and messy but still fucking beautiful. How the hell had Target Practice deserved her?

“So, I’ve seen you. Not your best hair day, I imagine,” he teased. It took her a second to reply, shifting uncomfortably at his observation.

“And?” she asked, her voice neutral, but he could’ve sworn he saw her lower lip pout. That did him in, the knot in his gut twisting excitedly.

“Well, I’d take you home if it were up to me,” he murmured, “but you’ll have to wait for someone else.”

Brash swept his gaze over her small body one more time, wondering what she looked like under that tattered dress, finding himself suddenly wishing he could put her in something much finer than what she was wearing, finer than anything she would have ever seen in her lifetime. His eyes came back to her gorgeous face and pretty red hair and he was filled with the desire to touch her, to tangle his hands in that fiery hair of hers.

In one fluid motion, he turned as he stood and began walking away. The last thing he saw out of the corner of his eyes was her slim hands still gently cradling the muffin. For the first time in—he didn’t know how long—he felt a pang of guilt. That was the girl that he was going to get killed, that docile little kitten cowering in her small cell. It pissed him off more than he cared to admit. He wasn’t ready to say she was innocent of her crimes, but he could admit that he didn’t give a fuck if she was a killer or demonspawn. Because no matter what else she turned out to be, Brash had seen for himself all that mattered.

That she was just the perfect little kitten.

When Brash stepped out into the late afternoon sun, he inhaled a deep breath through his nostrils and slipped his missing glove on, covering the hand that had carried the muffin. _Why_ , he mused, _did I bring her a fucking muffin?_

“Had to be a fucking firehair,” he muttered angrily, regretfully, and started his journey back to the war camp.


End file.
